


prefacing this with the fact that i'm totally not gay but what's it like having a wife?

by unicyclehippo



Series: Blue Girls Have The Most Fun [6]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2019-12-08
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:48:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21714841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unicyclehippo/pseuds/unicyclehippo
Summary: prompt request: jester talking to yasha about "realizing things" ("what's it like having a wife") and maybe conflicted feelings re: beauor, jester doesn't know what she's feeling but boy is she feelin' it
Relationships: Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett, Yasha/Zuala (Critical Role)
Series: Blue Girls Have The Most Fun [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1824289
Comments: 5
Kudos: 282





	prefacing this with the fact that i'm totally not gay but what's it like having a wife?

‘What’s it like - having a wife?’ Jester asks. Nearly immediately regrets it when the other woman jerks, eyes darting to hers, wide and surprised. ‘I’m sorry,’ she’s quick to say, shaking her head quickly, enough to make her jewellery jangle as the movement tosses them against her curling horns. ‘That’s not - it’s probably the _worst_ thing to ask you right now, and, I mean, you look busy, so I should...‘

Yasha looks down at her empty hands, then around at the largely empty room, and back to Jester, eyebrows raised. ‘I am not busy.’

‘Oh.’

‘Would you,’ Yasha swallows hard. Gestures toward the other piece of furniture in her room beside the bed, a solid chair. ‘Do you want…to sit?’

‘Um.’ Jester glances behind her, down the empty hallway to the closed door of the room she shares with Beau. ‘Yes. Sure, yes.’

‘You don’t have to if -‘

‘I want to!’

Yasha seems to recoil a little at the very forceful show of what was _supposed_ to be casual. She nods. Arranges herself awkwardly as though they are about to have an interview, her back stiff and straight, and Jester wonders if maybe she’s afraid. Yasha just being afraid in general would be bad enough but her being afraid of what Jester might ask, might do because of her answers? That feels bad.

Jester forces herself to relax. She closes the door and takes the seat, folds her legs criss-cross and plays for a minute with her skirts, getting the pleats to sit just _so_.

‘Have you been sleeping better?’ Jester asks, voice breaking the silence. Yasha doesn’t flinch this time, but Jester thinks that might be because she’s holding herself too tight and still. Like a perfect alabaster statue.

‘Ah. Yes. Caduceus came by with some tea,’ Yasha tells her. ‘He…says some very strange things,’ she adds, a little hesitantly, unsure if she’s allowed to comment on his strangeness when she—has done what she has done.

‘Oh yeah, he’s _great_ , isn’t he?’

Yasha nods.

It’s a bit dizzying, Jester finds, to be watched so intently by Yasha. Her gaze hasn’t fallen away since Jester entered the room, and she watches each small motion Jester makes—the way she brushes her hair behind her ears, the way her tail curls, the way she fiddles awkwardly with the rings on her fingers—but Jester isn’t sure how much of the attention is the other woman tracking and understanding that Jester feels incredibly deeply nervous or, or off-kilter or strange, and how much is Yasha watching out for an attack. The intensity is one thing. Yasha’s dual coloured eyes are another. Jester finds her own attention split between them, flicking from blue to violet.

‘We weren’t married for long.’ Yasha jerks when jester does. ‘I’m sorry—did you...still want to know?’

‘Only if you want to talk about it!’ Jester insists.

‘I—don’t mind.’

‘I don’t _ever_ want to make you do something you don’t want to do!’ Jester says it forcefully, entirely on purpose. Yasha needs to know, she _needs_ to know, Jester would _never_ —

‘Jester,’ Yasha says, her voice low and soothing. Her accent breaks Jester’s name in two, each spoken with infinite fondness, gentleness. ‘Everything is okay.’

For once, Jester doesn’t have a reply to that. Sometimes she denies it sadly, other times agrees fervently, but now she just sits in it. Yasha is right, more or less. They got her back. Killed the Hand. Killed Obann. Things are better than they have been for a long time.

‘We were married at dawn,’ Yasha tells her. ‘It was…not romantic. Except that it was her, my Zuala, and we were getting married.’

Jester can’t sit alone on her chair; she hurries across the room to sit next to yasha on the bed, brings her knees up to her chest, chin resting on them as she listens, bright eyed.

‘Okay,’ Yasha says, and shifts accordingly. Turns her body toward Jester and crosses her legs. ‘When you are married in the tribe, you, ah, you make offerings to distract evil spirits from you. So they are not watching, will not curse your union. I delivered a great sacrifice, the best one that I could.' Yasha gives the words weight, an insistence, like she’s trying to convince Jester or herself of it. Her eyes fall to her lap and big fingers fiddle with the laces of her boots. ‘But,' she shrugs. 'It mustn’t have worked.’

‘I’m sorry, Yasha.’

The woman shrugs again. ‘I don’t—there are some things that are missing still. From my memory. But if you have questions…something you wanted to know,’

‘I don’t know,’ Jester admits. Maybe she should have written some down. Maybe she should figure out why she’s so interested in the first place. Probably it's because if she knows how marriage is supposed to work, why it works, why it is good, she can get the Gentleman and her mama back together and they can live happily ever after. Or maybe—

‘iIs this—‘ Yasha looks like she has bitten her tongue but she continues very carefully, very quietly. ‘About Beau?’

Jester plays it very very cool. ‘What? No? Why would - Did she - Why would this be about _Beau_? That’s ridiculous and not at all something I am thinking about.’ As she rambles, super convincingly, she starts to wonder herself if maybe she isn’t being entirely…truthful. Her forehead creases and she looks with wide eyes to Yasha. ‘Is it?’

‘I don’t know. Is it?’

Jester drops her gaze. Her eyes wander from Yasha's mismatched own, trail down from the tops of strong shoulders down to careful hands, smoothing wrinkles out from the blanket on her bed. She frowns down at the blanket, plucks at it where it is frayed and for a few minutes she works at mending those small rips she can see in the fabric. ‘She—‘ _nearly died,_ Jester thinks but doesn’t say, because that, despite the mind control, that was Yasha. Jester wants to cry all of a sudden. When had things become so difficult? When had she started to think seven steps ahead in a conversation to make sure she didn’t upset, didn’t offend, didn’t _hurt_ her friends? It feels like a cage pressing in around her and she sucks in a shaky breath.

‘Jester?’

‘I'm okay.’

‘No.’ Yasha—so carefully that Jester wonders if the woman thinks she is fragile, about to crack into shards at a too-heavy touch—sets her hand on Jester’s. The little mending magic fizzles out with the jolt of surprise, fibers and threads of blanket untwisting and snapping apart once more. ‘You can talk to me, Jester. I am—not weak.’ There’s a charge that flickers, over her fingers and behind Yasha’s eyes and when she repeats herself, it is with renewed confidence. 'I am not weak. And you are my friend. Whatever you say, we can…figure it out.’

It isn’t a question but it almost feels like one. Like with the gesture Yasha has reached out on two levels, both with hand extended, and is asking for her trust.

After their long journey's, after everything that has happened, Jester’s trust is small now, and bruised and scratchesd. She hands it over anyway.

‘She died,’ Jester says, flat and pained. ‘Or nearly did. _Twice._ And I - I was so _scared_.’

Yasha nods. ‘You are scared when any of them—us,’ she corrects after a moment, ‘falls. Is she…different?’

‘Yes.' A quick answer. There's no need to think about that. ‘She’s my best, my first best friend.’

Yasha hums. Her expression is blank of judgement but there is a faint air to her like she remains…unconvinced.

Jester falters. ‘She’s my best friend, isn’t she?’

‘Yes.’ Yasha squeezes her hand. ‘Tell me, Jester, do you think of her first in the morning?’

‘Well…yeah. We’re roommates, she’s the first person I see.’

Yasha shakes her head. ‘Before that. Before you even open your eyes.’

Jester frowns. Yasha seems to be hinting at something, the meaning of which slides sneakily away each time Jester tries to grasp it, to find what it looks like, what it feels like, what it _is._

‘Well...she snores, so I hear her.’

Yasha stares a moment. Then nods. ‘Okay. Well. What about this - when you are doing, mm, fun things like—‘ She blanks for a moment and then says, hesitantly, 'Dancing?’

‘I love to dance!’

‘Okay, when you are dancing, who do you want to be dancing with you?’

Jester squints suspiciously. Yasha seems to be hinting, she realises now, that she thinks Jester’s answer will be Beau. And the thing is, of course it is Beau? Beau would make an amazing dance partner? That’s just natural? She’s taller than Jester is, and a height difference is really wonderful and necessary when thinking about the silhouette a couple makes when they're dancing, you know? And she's strong and lean, with the build of a dancer and when she fights she has the grace of one too, so Jester is pretty sure she'd be good at it. She’s also great at leading and not leading, so it wouldn’t be a problem if Jester got carried away and jumped into lead when maybe she shouldn’t. Jester explains all of this very matter of factly to Yasha, who just nods again.

‘And when you are bored?’

‘Nott is very funny,’ Jester is quick to point out. ‘And Fjord has just the _best_ stories of sailing, and Caduceus knows so much about so _much._ And you of course,’ she adds, just to see Yasha smile.

It works. Yasha smiles very fondly down at her. She has a broad face, so well-suited to stern lines and anger. And, Jester sees, angelic with a smile.

'And Beau?’ she asks.

‘Beau? No, she isn’t good for boredom.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because she—‘ _Because I’m not bored with her_ , Jester thinks. and just shrugs instead. If she thinks the small concession will halt the questions Yasha has for her, these big seemingly easy but oddly confusing questions, she is wrong.

‘What is your favourite colour? What do you give Beau when she is hurt? Does she make you laugh? Do you want to make her laugh? Has she ever given you a gift? Who do you want to be with when you are sad? What do you feel when she touches you?’

‘That’s too much!’ Jester cuts her off, oddly anxious. She jumps from the bed, hurries to put a few yards between them.

Yasha doesn’t move to follow, but she watches her go with a soft expression Jester doesn’t recognise.

‘I…Thank you. For talking to me, Yasha,’ she says, all in scrambled pieces, and hurries for the door.

‘It was like being more than myself,’ she says before Jester makes it there. Her voice is louder, warmer, richer, and when Jester glances back at her, she sees that soft expression has morphed to something…peaceful. Deeply sad, but peaceful. ‘I always heard it was two halves of a soul—the man and the woman, joined together. United, a match. But when I met Zuala, when we met again and again and spoke, and laughed, and danced, and when I was finally lucky enough to kiss her,' Yasha’s breath catches and she begins to cry. Her eyes close. ‘It was more than myself, what we had. Perhaps it was two halves joining, but it never felt like that.’

Yasha is silent for a short while. ‘What did it feel like?’ Jester whispers.

‘Terrifying. Wonderful.’

‘Terrifyingly wonderful?’

Yasha opens her eyes. The tears have leaked a little, spilling down her cheeks, and her eyes—watery, washed out—are clear and bright. ‘She made me very happy, in a time where that was very difficult,’ is all Yasha says, and though she doesn’t send Jester away, Jester can hear that she needs some time.

She steps out with another ‘Thank you’, this one real and quiet, and closes the door behind her. Leans back against it. Lets out a long, slow breath.

She is still there when Beau climbs the stairs, hair slicked with sweat and skin glistening, mottled with purpling bruises.

Beau grins, lifts a hand. 'Hey.’ Her eyes flicker over her, taking in her position, the door behind her. Perhaps some hint of Jester's confusion, turmoil too, because she asks, 'Everything alright?’

Jester stares for a moment. Beau is handsome and beautiful— _hot,_ she thinks Beau would insist upon—and so much more, and some of Yasha’s questions start to make a lot of sense all of a sudden in a big, important, kinda scary way.

‘Jes?’

‘Yes. Yeah, everything is great. Just a little chat.’

Beau doesn’t look convinced, but she nods anyway. ‘Okay.’

**Author's Note:**

> hi im unicyclehippo on tumblr as well, feel free to swing on by &; say hi or send me a prompt x


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